The Americas have seen over 500 years of resistance against colonizers’ companies trying to destroy Indigenous communities and their land to extract natural resources. The Shahuarmanga’s livelihood is the next chapter in this destructive tale. Fossil fuel companies like Texaco, Block 21 and Pluspetrol plan to trample on their lands to dig for more oil.
The Shahuarmanga are an Indigenous community that resides in Pastaza, an Amazonian province of Ecuador. Tourism is currently their main strategy for conserving their culture and land. But fossil fuel companies are demanding to enter their lands in order to search for oil and gas. Not only is it ridiculous to search for more fossil fuels in a time of climate breakdown, but to sacrifice other people’s livelihoods for it is simply revolting.
So, too, think the Shahuarmanga. Together with 33 other Indigenous communities, led by women, they stand their ground and resist these multinational polluters. They didn’t let themselves be intimidated, and organized protests and sit-ins around the province and in the capital of Quito to demand these companies desist their plans immediately. Digging machines were already approaching their holy lands, so there was no time to lose.
The protests were organised swiftly and efficiently, and the results are cause for celebration. The Shahuarmanga succeeded in barring the petrol companies entry into their lands for now. The companies have issued a second demand, which they hope will be overturned this january. In any case, the Shahuarmanga won’t sit idly by, because this is their land, their culture and their livelihood put in the scale. Fossil fuel activities doesn’t just imply the destruction of the forest, but also the pollution of the rivers and the air, a biodiversity catastrophe, the exploitation of what they call Pachamama, Mother Earth.
Their resolve is strong. In their words: “[T]hanks to the support of the institutions that give us confidence and show us that we are not alone, we have the support, they give us strength to continue in this struggle of resistance. Since we are all resistance. We are land, we are river, we are seed.”
Het Actiefonds is proud to support the Shahuarmanga!
Putting the spotlight on the connections between meat production and climate change, AniCA addresses the harm the animal industry is causing. Blocking the biggest poultry company in Germany, they showed that the animal industry has to stop in order for humans and animals to live!
Uniting the fragemented resistance against animal industry, AniCA adresses a broad range of issues. The animal industry is not only violating animal rights, but is also a huge contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and has an enormous ecological footprint due to massive use of land, water, manure and antibiotics. The neocolonial production of fodder used to feed up the animals is causing deforestation and exploitation of local populations. Also in Europe, the animal industry barely provides for safe and sufficient working conditions in factories, especially during times of COVID. Additionally, the animal industry plays an important role in the emergence and dissemination of zoonoses, which caused the COVID pandemic and can bring about new pandemics in the future.
Combining actions for climate justice, animal rights, workers rights and against possible future zoonoses, AniCA is a strong alliance of groups that have been organizing several effective actions.
ACTION
AniCA organized a camp and mass action against the PHW Group, the largest poultry company in Germany. The program of the camp raised awareness about everything that is wrong with the animal industry. Farmers and citizens were invited to talk, exposing the exploitation of PHW of animals and humans alike.
Widely covered by the media in papers and on TV, the action was a big success. During a full day, the access to the central storage of the company was effectively blocked.
Their action demanded of the PHW to protect workers in slaughterhouses and meat processing units from COVID and to make sure they receive sufficient health protection. During the pandemic, the animal industry was a big covid hotspot, in Germany and globally.
A second demand was the banning of the import of animal fodder. For the production of animal feed, resources such as land and water are used that could be used directly for the production of food or for climate protection measures such as reforestation. A large share of the protein-rich animal feed fed in Europe originates from Latin America, where large areas of rainforest are being cleared.
A third demand was the shifting of the subsidies that are currently going into the animal industry to solidary and ecological agriculture.
AniCA believes in a common radical fight for emancipatory, solidary and sustainable alternatives to our current capitalist system.
Afraid of this united activist movement, PHW built a protective wall (as can be seen in this video) around their main seat in the days before the action, which shows that they take activism against the animal industry seriously and see it as a threat!
Het Actiefonds is proud to support AniCA and their actions that scare the animal industry!
In the run-up to the controversial Cambodian elections in July 2023, Unite for Freedom is creating social media content that challenges state-run media and issues around state violence and activism.
Context
Cambodia has been ruled by Hun Sen, the current Prime minister, since 1985. After seizing governmental power in 1997 and banning the main opposition party in 2017, Hun Sen’s rule is uncontested. He is known to violate human and environmental rights to benefit himself and a small elite, having abandoned the party’s anti-colonial and Marxist-Leninist roots. As the general elections near, it is likely that his government will not only maintain the status quo, but also become more violent. Examples of this include the recent jailing (for a second time) of one of the country’s most prominent trade union leaders, Chhim Sithor, as well as the attacks and threats targetting climate activists as the country is witnessing one of the world’s worst rates of deforestation.
Action
Unite for Freedom is one of the few groups trying to highlight abuses in Cambodia and reaching a large and vast public. This is a dangerous activity that requires strict anonymity, but also needs a network in order to collect news from all over the country. Despite these difficulties, their satirical cartoons have gone viral and sparked discussion on social media, while their videos reached over 15 million views.
Example
In the words of the collective: “we released this cartoon, depicting two HS: the one above angrily pointing at some Buddhist monks and young activists blessing a tree to try and stop it from being logged, and a second HS below, smiling with his thumbs up and calling the activities of the country’s most notorious logging tycoon try Pheap ‘development!’”
Against repression
Their project has the potential to play an important role in tackling state violence. Exposing state crimes is needed in any country that practices repression. For Unite for Freedom, Cambodia’s pro-democracy movement is lacking ideas, resources and humanpower. They fear that Hun Sen will continue to stay in power after the elections, and know that an actual liberation movement has to be build from within. Their aim is therefore for the platform to become a legitimate political force by organising mass protests in the streets and creating content on a regular basis that reaches millions of Cambodians.
Prospects
To achieve this, Unite for Freedom plans to release content more structurally and recruit and train new content creators in a way that is secure. In addition, they wish to travel to parts of the country where state crimes are generally poorly covered. As such, they want to make it possible for others to dare to resist the violence and exploitation that is happening in their country.
Despite a police eviction, the newest fight for a truly autonomous space in Prague has just begun!
Prague is in dire need of an autonomous space where people can express themselves freely without the constraints of our profit-driven society. Ever since the eviction of the Autonomous Social Centre Klinika in January of 2019, there has been no such space in the Czech capital. Meanwhile, Prague is plagued by thousands of empty, decaying buildings and thousands of AirBnB flats and corporate offices. The center of Prague has become an unlivable place for local free-minded people.
The collectif Opravdu Dobré Squaty (really good squats) was inspired by the story of Klinika and other previous Czech squats and social centers and aims to mount their own. The members wanted to establish a new social center in a relatively central district of Prague. The building they had in mind is owned by foreign investors and has been empty since the 90s.
Sadly, the possibility of immediate eviction by the police is very real in the Czech Republic. The ODS already took this into account, and managed to squat the building for five hours before being evicted. Be that as it may, they regard their action as a succes. According to them, even the act of transforming a decaying building into a radical space for just one day is commendable given the current climate in Prague.
ODS wants a society based around solidarity in which human wellbeing is more important than money or property. It believes that creating autonomous islands in the current capitalist landscape is a first step in changing the world. In a space in where anyone can feel free to stay and express themselves without being discriminated in any way, people can challenge the current societal and cultural norms.
As Amsterdam enjoys the annual Amsterdam Light Festival, migrants are being detained in cages at Europe’s external borders or deported with illegal pushbacks.
Europe’s migration policy is racist and deadly. The EU pours billions of euros into sending and preventing migrants into Europe, while deliberately keeping asylum centers and refugee camps in dire condition. Around the world, we see border walls being erected and the right to free movement, especially for those who need it most, drastically curtailed.
In the EU, the containment of migration implicates downright inhumane practices. Bulgaria uses EU money to imprison migrants in cages. Frontex conducts deadly and illegal pushbacks on the Mediterranean. Morocco drops migrants trying to enter Spain’s Melilla without a map or water in the Sahara. But the continent of universal human rights only talks about these rights when other countries do something wrong.
What better time to raise the hypocritical violations of the right to freedom of movement than during the Amsterdam Light Festival? While tourists and the Dutch gazed at the reassuring art in canal boats, Watch The Med held its international meeting weekend of the alarm phone group in early December. By attaching Led-light banners on the bridges of the Light route, Watch The Med demonstrated for those for whom a boat ride is definitely not a moment of relaxation and enjoyment, but a life-threatening and anxiety-inducing undertaking.
The action was well received by Light Festival visitors. Some boats sang the slogans on the banners, and others honked in solidarity. The organization of the festival, however, was less pleased. They let the police remove most banners from the route after a mere two hours.
The alarm phone of Watch The Med takes emergency calls from migrant boats in the Mediterranean and informs the relevant coast guard to rescue them. Watch The Med documents all migrant emergencies on the militarized sea, including the number of people in distress, their exact location and whether the Coast Guard is making sufficient efforts to rescue the people.
Their essential work is on the edges of Fortress Europe. It is therefore all too easy for Europeans to know nothing about what is going on there, or to shrug their shoulders. With actions like these, Watch The Med brings the Mediterranean to the heart of Europe. Looking away is not an option. Stop the militarization of the Mediterranean. Let migrants through. A sea should not be a wall, but a bridge.
All over the Czech Republic, students from Univerzity za klima occupied university buildings in the struggle against climate change. The strike is part of the global movement End Fossil: Occupy.
End Fossil: Occupy
End Fossil: Occupy is a climate justice movement, occupying hundreds of schools and universities all over the world between September and December 2022. They will not give in until they achieve the end of the fossil fuel era!
Het Actiefonds supports several actions withing this movement and stands in solidarity with all occupation of End Fossil: Occupy. Het Actiefonds supported this action and the actions in the Netherlands.
Occupations in the Czech Republic
Univerzity Za Klima was founded in the spring of 2019 in response to the Fridays for
Future wave of high school climate strikes. They try to bring together students, members of the academic community and workers who are not indifferent to the future of the planet we live on. They see universities as important institutions that should set an example for social change and climate justice.
17 faculties in 11 universities were occupied from November 14th to November 17th 2022. The students, joinded by teachers, academics and other sympatisants demanded the university and the government to take concrete steps in the struggle against climate change as soon as possible in a time of multiple crisis.
During the occuption, alternative programs, workshops, lectures and film screenings were organised by the students, joined by professors who changed their courses into lectures about climate change. Sleeping quarters and an action kitchen were organised as well.
The actions took place in Prague, Brno, Ústí nad Labem, Hradec Králové and Olomouc. On the last day, the students organised a demonstration. In Brno, the students marched to the Faculty of Law of Masaryk University, to demand the end of the cooperation between the universtiy and Energetický a průmyslový holding (EPH), the largest energy group in Central Europe. In Prague, the students met with Prime Minister Petr Fiala and handed over their demands at the Government Office.
Het Actiefonds is proud to have supported this occupation and will continue to support the stuggle against climate change and stands in solidarity with all End Fossil: Occupy actions.
The Mekong River flows from China and is the lifeline for villages and towns in Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. In all, about 60 million people depend on the river for food and income. With China building a dam and Thai multinationals buying up land along the river to grow sugar on a large scale, the livelihoods of millions and people, animals and plants are under pressure.
It is no secret that China has been working for years to tighten its grip on Southeast Asia. For example, it has already had three artificial islands built in the South China Sea in order to subsequently construct military bases on them. So too are the 11 dams China has been building in the Mekong since 2012. These barrages amount to an economic and ecological stranglehold which China has on South Asian economies and ecosystems.
Since the construction of the dams, the water level of the Mekong has plummeted. In 2019, the water level was lower than in the past 50 years. Add to this the effects of the climate crisis and you get a serious situation of persistent drought, flash floods and increasing poverty in the Mekong Delta. According to the Mekong River Commission, there are already 40 percent fewer fish in the river than a decade ago.
Thai sugar companies are taking the opportunity to buy up tracts of land in Thailand and Cambodia and grow large quantities of sugar on it. Backed up by foreign investors, these companies manage to turn the banks of the river into a monocultural wasteland from which only the company benefits.
Many villages and communities can no longer stand the drying up of the Mekong. Representatives from Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand united in SEVANA and met in Bangkok this September and October. The Thai capital was holding the Mekong-ASEAN Environmental Week at the time, where politicians and lobbyists gathered to discuss plans for a sustainable future in Southeast Asia. SEVANA was also present to advocate for the rights of Mekong communities to have a say in the river’s future.
Het Actiefonds helped SEVANA host and accommodate the representatives of the Mekong communities. As a result, SEVANA managed to organize several activities and meetings where the communities could exchange information, as well as perform ceremonies on the river that officials and politicians attended too. Their presence was not beyond question, as the dam construction company had indicated in advance that they would not appreciate their attendance. Moreover, the company had distributed school supplies and clothes in the area where the ceremonies and actions in order to impede popular support for SEVANA.
Still, this does not deter the action group. Until the Mekong returns to its former state, they will continue to advocate an end to water dams, land expropriations and monoculture.
The River state of Nigeria is notorious for its oil drilling. There is very little regulation, which fossil fuel companies like Shell are eager to exploit. Despite numerous protests and court cases, the oil spills and flares continue to make the region unlivable for humans, animals and plants. This has to stop.
In 1995, nine Nigerian activists from Ogoni were sentenced to death for fighting against Shell’s drilling practices. Ogoni land was ravaged by oil spills and poor air quality, leaving residents in the area barely able to live.
Thanks to the dedication of Ogoni activists like Isaac Agbara, Shell was finally ordered to pay 45.9 billion naira (about 100 million euros, adjusted for inflation) in reparations to Ogoni land in 2021, thus putting an end to a 32-year-long court case.
But history is in danger of repeating itself. The Kereken Boue community is currently sounding the alarm. This community lives on the southern border of Ogoniland. They report an inexplicable and disastrous decline in life in their villages. Crops dry out and shrivel, fruits fall from their trees before they are ripe, black spots wander in the air above their heads, the stench of hydrocarbon fills the air and rainfall discolors. But most disturbing is the sudden death of people and animals.
The consequences of this grim situation are increasing poverty due to crop failures, village abandonment, and psychological complaints due to premature loss of loved ones. But so far, no official or politician seems to even care what happens to the Kereken Boue.
The Kallop Humanitarian and Environmental center is therefore organizing demonstrations in Port Harcourt, the administrative town in the province, to make the plight of the Kereken Boue known to the authorities. Oil companies have been destroying lives in the area for decades, and no lawsuit seems to stop them from continuing to drill. So, with support from het Actiefonds, they traveled to Port Harcourt, armed with banners and posters. They will not stand by as their homes and hearths slowly turn black with fossil fuels.
They are demanding climate justice and an end to the fossil industry. If nothing happens within three months, they warn, they will be forced to turn to direct action, such as highway blockades.
From May to December 2022, Movimiento Maricas Bolivia organized 7 different artistic street interventions to put queer indigenous identities in the spotlight during national holidays of the Catholic and Bolivian Calendar. The poetic interventions denounce homophobia in Bolivia, while at the same time critiquing the mainly white and racist existing LGBTQ+ community. Indigenous queer identities are often obscured in the mainstream struggle for acceptance and political equity. With their actions and art, Movimiento Maricas Bolivia wants to decolonize the mainstream idea of queerness that is a reaction to the heterosexuality imposed by the Spanish invasion. Their art expresses a more local, plural and Indian sexual identity to the public, that is not a reaction to heterosexual normativity but an expression of their indigenousness. ‘Memorial Abya Yala’ was their artistic intervention voor Decolonization Day (día de la descolonisación) on 12th of octobre.
12 October used to be Columbus day in Bolivia, but since 2011 it has officially been called Decolonisation day (Día de la descolonisación). The Movimiento Maricas Bolivia marked the occasion with a performance next to the statue of Columbus in La Paz to underscore the lost indigenous sexual and gender identities. The performance was called ‘Memorial Abya Yala’, the memorial for the continent widely known as South and Middle America, and was seen by roughly 200 bystanders.
The performer, wrapped in a whipala characteristic for indigenous Bolivian culture, accused the bible and Hispanic colonists of imposing heterosexuality and gender binarism on the continent and wrote the names of the lost indigenous sexualities on a big map of Abya Yala. They also read a poem by Francisco Godoy Vega. Here is a fragment of the poem la violencia naturalizada de santiago y el indio pícaro, accompanied here with an english translation:
¿tiene una erótica evo morales?
¿tiene una erótica la chola o la mapuche?
¿dónde queda la memoria sexual de nuestras culturas ancestrales?
¿qué fue del sexo moche?
nuestros cuerpos son erotizados cuando
al blanco le da la gana
la dictadura colonial sobre el cuerpo indio
sobre el deseo indio
es la afrenta a nuestras comunidades
somos re-expuestxs y exotizadxs
nos follan cuando quieren lxs blancxs
en su poder universal
does Evo Morales have an erotic?
does the Chola or the Mapuche have an erotic?
Where is the sexual memory of our ancestral cultures?
what happened to Moche sex?
our bodies are eroticized when
the white man feels like it
the colonial dictatorship over the Indian body
over Indian desire
is the affront to our communities
we are re-exposed and exoticised
They fuck us when they want to, the whites
in their universal power
See the whole intervention here:
Single-use plastic is polluting the environment and communities’ living spaces everywhere. The Community Action for Social and Envionmental Change (CASEC) in Makeni, Sierra Leone, is fighting for a plastic free society, at least in their town!
CASEC wants to abolish the use of single-use plastic products in Makeni, Sierra Leona. Since most of the plastic used in Makeni is not recyclable, lots of it ends up as litter on the streets and in waterways, or on illegal landfills, often on territories where people live. From time to time, these landfills are set on fire to clear space, spreading toxic smoke. The remaining plastic is – of course – not biodegradable and the toxic chemicals and microplastics that spread through the water and the soil damage crops and drinkable water, and can cause serious health problems for people, plants and animals.
Therefore, CASEC is campaigning on different levels of local society against the use of plastic. They focus on schools and food markets to raise awareness about the devastating impact of plastic products and inspire people to go plastic free. In addition, they also press local policy makers to take anti-single-use plastic measures, like better organizing the waste collection and recycling, lobbying for the production of biodegradable and recyclable plastics and moving the waste from illegal dump sites to official ones, creating healthier living environments. They equally hold talkshows on local TV to make the issue a hot topic.
CASEC is a Makeni NGO that addresses the disturbance of ecosystems at a local level, working on local solutions to protect the environment and all people living in and with the local ecosystems. CASEC also focusses on the sustainable management of natural resources, like local wood supplies, while helping communities to anticipate, cope and adapt to changing environmental conditions.
Het Actiefonds is proud to support CASEC in their campaigns for a healthier environment for all, because everyone deserves water without microplastics.
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